> even though every sane person has to acknowledge that legalizing drugs in part is more effective than enforcing more rigid controls,
No it is not. Two examples of this are Singapore, Taiwan and Japan.
In both these countries there are zero tolerance for drug users and drug traffickers and the results show. Smoking Marijuana almost teenagers in Japan is basically unheard of.
It seems that laws in the USA and Europe are not strict enough to act as a deterrence. If many of these countries adopted the death penalty or similar penalties for trafficking, then perhaps something could be done about it.
(Singapore executes drug traffickers. I don't know what legal punishments there are for traffickers in Japan, but I know the social punishments are severe. A family will often cut contact with a relative if he is sentenced for a minor crime. Sports stars, tenured professors and celebrities will loose their jobs if they had a criminal offence even for something completely unrelated to their career. Quite different from the attention that washed out American celebrities get.)
Anecdotally, speaking as someone who knows a number of young people from Singapore, they certainly smoke weed just as much (perhaps even more) than people I know from the UK. Have you considered that perhaps a zero tolerance approach just drives use further underground? I doubt the official figures are accurate, and it's probably not sensible to compare an authoritarian dictatorship with liberal Western democracy.
Japan just has a low crime rate across the board, largely for the reason you mentioned. Again, this probably isn't helpful - inducing a general respect for the law into a society is a difficult proposition, or every nation in the world would be doing just that.
essentially we're a drug driven society (caffeine, taurine, aspirin, adderall, etc.) hence a death penalty for trafficking might ultimately be effective but at the same time seems totally ludicrous to me.
furthermore I don't think drugs themselves are the problem but the underlying mechanisms of society that drive somebody into drug abuse.
Because it is dangerous. People act according to their beliefs regardless of them being grounded in real evidence or not. I would say we are poorer for it as we have seen people fly planes into buildings or have tried to eradicate an entire race as a result of their beliefs.
How many people have been killed because of the campaign of atheism and "scientific materialism" as happened in many countries (e.g. Albania, USSR, etc...).
You do not understand the problem. The problem is not beliefs or ideology, but zealotory (the insane belief that your way is the one true way and that you are better/smarter/more enlightened than anyone else).
That is pretty much an apt description for New Atheism. It is just a different form of zealotery.
How do we separate insane beliefs from sane ones? This distinction might be clear to you now, but what will you do when you let yourself be guided by unfounded belief? Do you think you will be able to see insane belief for what it really is before it is too late? You avoid having to make that mistake by abandoning belief.
Why are New Atheists so obsessed with other people's personal beliefs? I have explained to you the problem of zealotry and the imposition of your beliefs on others (which is clearly wrong in most moral frameworks).
Yet New Atheists do not see this as wrong. Some have even argued that parents should be prevented from "indoctrinating" (i.e. teaching children religion and their moral framework).
> I took a step back on the big picture analyzing groups attacking "Climate Science" with obvious interests behind.
So? There are other groups promoting 'Climate Science' with obvious interests behind them (Al Gore's political interests, companies that may benefit from carbon trading, science cliques, companies working on carbon sequestration programmes, etc...). Don't think that those who promote global warming are as pure as the driven snow.
Trying to demonise all those who question the reality of AGW is not conducive to a robust debate on the topic.
Maybe. But I am sure that if records show that a product is delayed, then the customer service rep should have a bit of leeway to make the customer happy.
Not my definition - I'm using "nationalism" to mean the belief that your group should be distinct/superior/excel more than other groups.
As an example - wishing to preserve and continue the Spanish literature tradition in Spain wasn't Spanish Nationalism. Prohibitions against teaching, learning, and using English under Francisco Franco was Spanish Nationalism. The former is good, the latter is bad.
> IMHO, it is naive for individuals to assume that someone else would protect/fight for their rights.
The Greeks used to fight like crazy amongst themselves, for instance, the Peloponnesian Wars. There was lots of bloodshed and destruction and waste. The Greeks had a nationalistic loyalty to their particular city-state. This ended when the Persians showed up, who were orders of magnitude less appealing to the Greeks, and that did away with a lot of inter-Greek warfare and nationalism.
I believe the same can be said of races and religions these days. Conflict between races is like conflict between the various Greek city-states: A damn waste. We've got bigger problems to solve, and can probably work on a better level than that.
Thinking that black people and white people, etc, etc can look after each other might sound now like the idea of Spartans and Athenians and Macedonians all on the same side. Crazy, but when it comes to pass, we'll be better off. I understand the purpose of the nationalism, but it's got to stop at some point if we want a better world. At the very least, enemy-centric nationalism where other groups are villainized needs to stop ASAP. Bad will come of it.
> The Greeks had a nationalistic loyalty to their particular city-state. This ended when the Persians showed up, who were orders of magnitude less appealing to the Greeks, and that did away with a lot of inter-Greek warfare and nationalism.
By replacing it with pan-Greek nationalism? The Greeks shared a lot of attributes (language, ideology, etc…). What you are railing against is “Geographic nationalism”. There is more to nationalism than that.
> I believe the same can be said of races and religions these days. Conflict between races is like conflict between the various Greek city-states: A damn waste.
The word “race” is a loaded word.
IMHO nationalism is not a waste. Each and every group should have the right to their own culture, religion, language and self-determination. As the UN Charter states:
> To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace
> All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development
> We've got bigger problems to solve, and can probably work on a better level than that.
To what end? Are problems really so big that the religious and cultural identities should be destroyed? Are our “problems” really bigger than a hundred years ago (when almost everyone died of Polio)?
I think that the common trend in many places is to replace culture with some Americanised version of culture and replace all native languages with English. I think this is a huge step backwards.
...it is naive for individuals to assume that someone else would protect/fight for their rights.
When you say "someone else" in this sentence, you have to mean someone different.
I disagree. I believe someone with a different skin color or a different culture would fight for me and protect my rights. It's a matter of the individuals and their values, not their cultural origins.
> When you say "someone else" in this sentence, you have to mean someone different.
I mean someone not part of the cultural, language or national grouping.
> I disagree. I believe someone with a different skin color or a different culture would fight for me and protect my rights
That may be a nice sentiment, but historically this has not happened (you also conflate skin colour with ethnic, cultural and language identity). Probably the best example where “other people” did not fight for a certain group’s rights is language rights.
In Eastern Europe, many Russians are finding their language and identity marginalised.
Tibet is another example where the majority does not protect the language, religious and cultural rights of a minority.
Other historic examples are the Basque in Spain, Pigmies in the DRC, Tamils in Sri Lanka, people of Chinese ancestry in Malaysia, Kurds in Turkey, etc…
South Africa's national language is bad English :)
While I do think that everyone should learn English in SA, research has shown that mother tongue education (especially at primary and secondary levels) are extremely important.
There are a lot of parents doing their children a disservice by sending them to English schools.
The world is a lot more complex than that. Germany was not treated well after the First World War. It was almost certain that there will be another war and a dictator would come to power (the only question was when, and what the dictator's name would be).
This does not mean that everything the German army did was good or justified (e.g. the Holocaust). And neither was the allies knights in shining armour (firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo comes to mind).
My grandparents (although not German citizens) were fiercely supportive of Germany in WW2, as where many people. This stemmed mostly from the UK’s treatment of people in its colonies.
You mean after the First World War. That's why I argued elsewhere that Woodrow Wilson deserves a big chunk of the blame for the rise of Nazi Germany, maybe even more than Hitler, since without his meddling in Europe during the Great War Hitler quite possibly would never have gotten anywhere.
But I guess that large webmail providers can band together and ensure that e-mails between their systems are encrypted (i.e. all messages sent by gmail to other gmail addresses or hotmail addresses are encrypted).
Then users would just use HTTPS to check their mail and everything would be encrypted.
This is not perfect, but it is at least a stopgap.
> Just to pick on one point: what conceivable moral logic leads one to choose democratic representation based on the financial health of their existing government?
Wasn't the idea to give each state to senators so that populous states do not encroach on less populous states?
If California gets many senators, they will surely vote to get federal money to fix their deficit.
No it is not. Two examples of this are Singapore, Taiwan and Japan.
In both these countries there are zero tolerance for drug users and drug traffickers and the results show. Smoking Marijuana almost teenagers in Japan is basically unheard of.
It seems that laws in the USA and Europe are not strict enough to act as a deterrence. If many of these countries adopted the death penalty or similar penalties for trafficking, then perhaps something could be done about it.
(Singapore executes drug traffickers. I don't know what legal punishments there are for traffickers in Japan, but I know the social punishments are severe. A family will often cut contact with a relative if he is sentenced for a minor crime. Sports stars, tenured professors and celebrities will loose their jobs if they had a criminal offence even for something completely unrelated to their career. Quite different from the attention that washed out American celebrities get.)